Eugene Terreblanche: Africa's crazed Hitler

IT'S A mark of how far South Africa has come that the last time Eugene Terreblanche was in the news, it was for making a derogatory remark about a long-dead African chief. He had pointed to the statue of Chief Tshwane, a 17th-century figure after whom the city of Pretoria is to be renamed, and referred to him as an “apie” – in other words a monkey. The incident made a small headline locally because a formal complaint was lodged with the South African Human Rights Commission.

Under the apartheid system the policeman-turned-farmer once vowed to die defending, there was no such commission. You could say what you like about “kaffirs”, as Terreblanche and his dwindling band of supporters in the Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB) persisted in calling their majority compatriots, and a lot more besides. The AWB carried out random shootings of black South Africans, as well as a bombing campaign that killed 21 people to try to halt the talks that led to the peaceful dismantling of apartheid. But Terreblanche stayed out of jail.

That wasn’t just because of the indulgence of the whites-only system. After apartheid ended, the supposed diehard successfully pleaded for an amnesty from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a body set up by people he once denounced as “a group of communist-inspired murderers from Hell”. In the end, the only crime he ever went to jail for was savagely clubbing one of his own black workers for eating and sleeping on the job, leaving him brain damaged.

There is a certain brutal irony that he met his own end as a result of a similar assault, allegedly attacked with a wooden club and a “panga” knife by two farm workers after a dispute over unpaid wages.

Terreblanche – his surname, the French for “white earth”, is a common one among Afrikaners – set up the AWB with four others in a garage in the Transvaal in 1973. They took as their flag a three-legged swastika on a white circle against a red backdrop, an obvious allusion to Hitler’s Nazi flag. Terreblanche later tried to deny this, saying the swastika-like arrangement was actually three sevens, and was a counter-sign to the three sixes which are the sign of the Devil.

This denial might have been more credible if his followers had not worn brown shirts, called themselves “storm falcons” and given straight-arm salutes. In any event, the AWB had good Boer nationalist reasons for its neo-fascist look. It bore a striking resemblance to the Ox-wagon Fire Guard (OB), an Afrikaner paramilitary organisation set up in 1939 to oppose South Africa’s entry into the Second World War on Britain’s side. In its heyday the OB held Nazi-style parades and torch-lit rallies, and had its own stormtrooper unit.

The new group operated secretly and passed largely unheard of until 1979, when Terreblanche and a gang of supporters raided a history lecture at the University of South Africa and tarred and feathered the speaker, a fellow Afrikaner. His crime had been to question the relevance of a ­particular Afrikaner religious holiday in a modern society.

In 1983 Terreblanche was given a two-year suspended sentence after a cache of arms, ammunition and explosives was found on his brother’s farm. Two co-defendants got 15 years for trying to overthrow the government – a regime condemned as racist by the outside world but seen as dangerously liberal by the AWB. Evidence at the trial showed the men also planned to infect customers at the gambling resort Sun City with syphilis.

Drawing support from poor white farmers, he addressed rallies with fiery, charismatic oratory. “I will fight for my people; I will suffer for my people; I will die for my people; but if God wills it, I will win freedom for my people,” he would roar.

Despite whipping up crowds with talk of “our superior white genes”, he insisted it was members of Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress who were the racists, not him, “because they claim all the land in Africa for blacks”. His own goal was the creation of a Boer state comprising the Orange Free State, the Transvaal and Northern Natal – almost a third of the country.

As President FW de Klerk legalised the ANC to clear the way for talks on ending white-majority rule, Terreblanche put on a paramilitary display. “We are sure we’re heading for a black revolution and we will meet it,” he vowed. “It will be a holy war.”

Fortunately he did not have the ­support he envisaged. Arriving at all public events on horseback, he was widely ridiculed when he fell off in front of a crowd. Lurid reports of an extra-marital affair did little to enhance his appeal among his staunchly Calvinist constituency, and dissidents from the AWB broke ranks to speak of his drinking and womanising.

An unrepresentative cell, the movement was reduced to murderous stunts in a doomed bid to halt the march of history. In 1993, it crashed a military truck through the plate-glass entrance to a conference hall where De Klerk was negotiating the terms of a new government with black leaders. The following year, in the run-up to the country’s first ­democratic elections, it bombed Johannesburg airport, a taxi rank and the ANC headquarters.

H is supporters also invaded the token black homeland of Bophuthatswana. They were trying to save Lucas Mangope, the president of the purported independent state, from his rebellious followers. But after the AWB terrorised the population, Mangope’s army turned their guns on them and the invaders fled, leaving three wounded comrades to be killed by an enraged black policeman. That was televised, compounding the movement’s humiliation.

Escaping jail for his political extremism, he was eventually sentenced to five years for attempting to murder a former security guard. He had often promised to die before submitting to jail but submit he did. He began his term in 2001 and the final blow came when his farm, furniture and all other assets were auctioned to raise money for the family of his victim.

He left jail – on horseback, as usual – in 2004 and claimed to be a changed man. He compared himself to Moses and likened supporters to the people of Israel. “I’m not here to declare war on anybody,” he said. “I want to call my people to God, the hour is here.” In fact he disappeared into obscurity, only re-emerging into public life last year when he announced that he had revived the AWB. Its goal, he said, was to join with like-minded forces to push for secession from South Africa.

“The white man in South Africa is realising that his salvation lies in self-government in territories paid for by his ancestors,” he said. “It’s now about the right of a nation that wants to ‑separate itself from a unity state filled with crime, death, murder, rape, lies and fraud.”

His own murder is bound to give his supporters a rallying point, putting them back in the spotlight for the first time in years with a chance to whip up unease among the Afrikaner population. Given that more than 3,000 white farmers are estimated to have been murdered since the end of apartheid there is already plenty of unease to build on. But it’s highly unlikely that moderate whites will shift to the extreme groups.

However, the government of President Jacob Zuma will now be under immense pressure to ban an apartheid-era song called Kill The Boer, which caused controversy when it was recently sung by a firebrand ANC youth leader.

The song is particularly unsettling for whites living in isolated farm communities and the opposition Democratic Alliance has already cited the controversy in expressing its “outrage and concern” at Terreblanche’s murder.

So the killing could help encourage the party leadership to tone down the racial rhetoric lower down its ranks.

If so, it could only improve racial harmony in South Africa, which would be the final irony of Terreblanche’s failed career.